Mind in a physical world: an essay on the mind-body problem and mental causation

1999 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 36-6223-36-6223
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. W. Brakel

Given that disparate mind/body views have interfered with interdisciplinary research in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, the mind/body problem itself is explored here. Adding a philosophy of mind framework, problems for both dualists and physicalists are presented, along with essential concepts including: independent mental causation, emergence, and multiple realization. To address some of these issues in a new light, this article advances an original mind/body account—Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP). Next, puzzles DiCoTop reveals, psychoanalytic problems it solves, and some empirical evidence accrued for views consistent with DiCoToP are presented. In closing, this piece challenges/appeals for neuroscience research to gain evidence for (or against) the DiCoToP view.


2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (109) ◽  
pp. 81-135
Author(s):  
John-Michael Kuczynski

If the mental can affect, or be affected by, the physical, then the mental must itself be physical. Otherwise the physical world would not be explanatorily closed. But it is closed. There are reasons to hold that materialism (in both its reductive and non-reductive varieties) is false. So how are we to explain the apparent responsiveness of the physical to the mental and vice versa? The only possible solution seems to be this: physical objects are really projections or isomorphs of objects whose essential properties are mental. (A slightly less accurate way of putting this would be to say: the constitutive - i.e. the non-structural and non-phenomenal - properties of physical objects are mental, i.e. are such as we are used to encountering only in "introspection".) The chair, qua thing that I can know through sense perception, and through hypotheses based strictly thereupon, is a kind of shadow of an object that is exactly like it, except that this other objects essential properties are mental. This line of thought, though radically counterintuitive, explains the apparent responsiveness of the mental to the physical, and vice versa, without being open to any of the criticisms to which materialism, dualistic interaction ism, and epiphenomenalism are open.


2001 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ted Honderich

It was only in the last century of the past millennium that the Philosophy of Mind began to flourish as a part of philosophy with some autonomy, enough for students to face examination papers in it by itself. Despite an inclination in some places to give it the name of Philosophical Psychology, it is not any science of the mind. This is not to say that the Philosophy of Mind is unempirical, but that it is like the rest of philosophy in being more taken up with good thinking about experienced facts than with establishing, elaborating or using them. Logic, if not formal logic, is the core of all philosophy, and so of the Philosophy of Mind. The discipline's first question is what it is for a thing to be conscious, whatever its capabilities. The discipline's second question is how a thing's being conscious is related to the physical world, including chairs, brains and bodily movements—the mind-brain or mind-body problem.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-213
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Palmquist

Kant’s Critical philosophy solves Descartes’ mind-body problem, replacing the dualism of the “physical influx” theory he defended in his early career. Kant’s solution, like all Critical theories, is “perspectival,” acknowledging deep truth in both opposing extremes. Minds are not separate from bodies, but a manifestation of them, each viewed from a different perspective. Kant’s transcendental conditions of knowledge portray the mind not as creating the physical world, but as necessarily structuring our knowledge of objects with a set of unconscious assumptions; yet our pre-conscious (pre-mental) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely physical. Hence, today’s “eliminative materialism” and “folk psychology” are both ways of considering this age-old issue, neither being an exclusive explanation. A Kantian solution to this version of the mind-body problem is: eliminative materialism is good science; but only folk psychologists can consistently be eliminative materialists. Indeed, the mind-body problem exemplifies a feature of all cultural situations: dialogue between opposing perspectives is required for understanding as such to arise.


PARADIGMI ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 123-132
Author(s):  
Erica Cosentino

- The mind-body problem is a crucial question to philosophers and cognitive scientists who pursue a program of naturalization of mind while preserving its causal efficacy. Two options seem to be open if we approach the question from a materialistic point of view: either preserve the notion of mental autonomy, by adhering to a nonreductive materialism, or give up that notion by supporting a reductive option. What I propose for discussion here is a neo-reductive perspective which considers mental causation as a sort of physical causation and maintains the mind-body identity.Keywords: Mental causation, Physicalism, Supervenience, Epiphenomenalism, Qualia, Identity theory.Parole chiave: Causalitŕ mentale, Materialismo, Sopravvenienza, Epifenomenalismo, Qualia, Teoria dell'identitŕ psico-fisica.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document